Monday, March 12, 2007

The White Gorilla


This 1945 jungle adventure movie is half of a double feature dollar DVD I picked up a while back. (The other movie on it is BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA.) This one stars Ray "Crash" Corrigan fairly late in his career, in the dual role of jungle guide Steve Collins and the mysterious white gorilla, who is shunned by his fellow gorillas because of his color.

That's only part of the story, though. THE WHITE GORILLA makes extensive use not only of stock African wildlife footage but also entire sequences from a 1927 silent serial called PERILS OF THE JUNGLE. Corrigan's character narrates those scenes, which have shots of him as an observer cut into the old footage, which is recut and rearranged to form a completely new storyline from the original version. That sounds crazy, but it actually sort of works in a bizarre way. According to IMDB, the scenes involving Corrigan and a few other characters were shot in three days, and I believe it. Poor old Crash was never a great actor, but by this time he was a far cry from the athletic action hero of UNDERSEA KINGDOM and the Three Mesquiteers movies. The whole conglomeration is pretty awful but oddly interesting. As I commented to Livia, "At least you've never seen anything else exactly like this movie before."

I guess I'm just a sucker for movies that feature guys in gorilla suits. There are some really clumsy battles in this one between the white gorilla and a black gorilla who's evidently his sworn enemy. If I'd seen this for the first time when I was six years old, I probably would have loved it. Or it might have seemed pretty dumb to me even then. Hard to say.

5 comments:

mybillcrider said...

You've never seen anything quite like Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, either.

Anonymous said...

I bought that same disc with the two films. Have not yet watched The White Gorilaa. I have seen Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla. You're in for a treat ... well, maybe not a treat, but a something. Yeah, you're in for a something with that. Not sure what, but you will be. Enjoy.

Vince said...

A new DVD of The White Gorilla recently came out. The movie is doubled-billed with another gorilla movie, 1958's The Bride and The Beast, written by Ed Wood. There are commentary tracks that consider the history of gorilla movies and gorilla suits.

You have no idea how excited I am about this.

Juri said...

I have the original Finnish poster for the film. But I don't think I'll ever see the actual movie. The poster might be worse than the film.

Scott Clements said...
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